Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

April 2008

April 06, 2008

Doug Ramsey, the esteemed jazz critic, author and master blogger, has a fabulous post up at Rifftides on Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. It includes a dynamite video clip of the tandem tenors in action playing the Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune, What the World Needs Now Is Love. After you read it, be sure to scroll down to "Medium But Well Done, Part 2," Doug's second-in-a-series post on medium-size jazz ensembles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Here, Doug looks at influential groups led by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Shorty Rogers and Gerry Mulligan. As always, Doug's posts are silky smooth and hugely insightful.

Kenya, Revisited. Last Tuesday night I went up to
the Manhattan School of Music on 122d St. and Broadway to hear a big band tribute to Kenya, the 1957 Machito album that changed the direction of Latin-jazz and revived and solidified the Afro-Cuban bandleader's reputation. JazzIz asked me to cover the event, and my review will appear in the magazine's June issue. To learn why Kenya is so important, go here and here. [Concert photos by Brian Hatton]

The performance for me was far and away the highlight thus far of the spring jazz concert season. Percussionist and drummer Bobby Sanabria [pictured] led the school's all-student Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra in a two-hour performance (no intermission) covering all 12 of the album’s original compositions, plus an encore. The youthful band's ability to perfectly execute such intricate scores demonstrated how well-rehearsed and profoundly talented they are.

Not satisfied to simply re-play the album's original charts, Bobby brought in three
arrangers—Joe Fiedler, Andrew Neesley and Danny Rivera—each of whom with Bobby's direction transformed the 1957 mambos and cha-cha-chas into extended pieces that showcased the band’s many up-and-coming, college-age stars.

Legendary percussionist Candido Camero [pictured] joined the orchestra on three songs, and Bobby sat in on timbales and drums on two of them. The 86-year-old Candido’s appearance was particularly striking given that he played on the original album. Two other Kenya vets were in the audience—tenor saxophonist Ray Santos and trombonist Eddie Bert. When I spoke to them afterward, both were astonished at the level of musicianship and said the performance rivaled their own. And they weren't just being polite.

Watching Bobby in action, you realize that in addition to being an
enormously talented, high-octane bandleader and performer, he also excels as an educator. Before the start of each selection, he explained the song's history and significance. And if all of this weren't enough, Bobby, 50, also is a masterful, old school entertainer. Using street-smart banter and Palladium-sized charisma, he fired off improvisational one-liners that reduced the size of the large auditorium to an intimate five-table café. The audience was in the palm of his hand.

"Look around,” Bobby said mid-way through the evening. “Afro-Cuban jazz is the only music where old people and young people still get together and have a great time. It crosses the generations!" Bobby also announced that the concert was being recorded and would be released as a CD. During the concert, six PBS cameras were on stage filming for an upcoming documentary on Afro-Cuban jazz.

If you’re in New York and didn't get a chance to see the Kenya,
Revisited concert last week, you're getting another shot. Bobby is conducting the band again—this time at Dizzy's Coca-Cola on April 14, at 7:30 and 9:30 pm.

Jimmy Cobb. Dig the extensive and robust three-part interview that writer Ralph A. Miriello conducted with drummer Jimmy Cobb at Jazz.com. Ralph managed to get Jimmy to chat in depth and at length about the many phases of his storied career. While you’re at Jazz.com, take in Tim Wilkins’ comprehensive review of Kenya, Revisited. As you'll see, blog editor-in-chief, jazz writer and book author Ted Gioia is hard at work building an expansive and extensive jazz archive and educational environment. Explore while you're there. Lots of great stuff at every turn.

Adam Rudolph. Monday night I was down at Roulette in New
York's SoHo to see Adam Rudolph conduct his Go: Organic Orchestra in a performance of four extended pieces. There were 27 musicians set up in the small loft space to work through Adam's texturally vibrant and brashly unorthodox compositions.

For a sense of what I heard, imagine Gil Evans and Charles Mingus meet the African savannah and Arab souk. It's not for everyone, but Adam's music certainly awakens in you a range of emotions if you're sensitive enough to feel them. Watching Adam in action was like watching a film of Jackson Pollock create one of his splatter paintings. Adam moves from section to section of the orchestra, locking eyes with musicians, teasing out textures and tones, and creating riff-driven crescendos. At one point, Adam had an electric bass and acoustic bass repeat a phrase. Then he brought in
four flutes, three clarinets, a bassoon and a cello. They dropped out and were replaced by two violins, three trumpets and three trombones. And an electronic instrument that responded to the nearness of the musician's hand. In short, it was wild.

Adam has an unusual way in which he writes out the scores and a special method by which he trains the
musicians. The result is a blend of World Music, polyrhythms and orchestral vibrancy. For me, what makes the Go: Organic Orchestra so interesting is its risk-taking and textural harmonics. Don’t expect melody. It’s more about how different combinations of instruments and artists sound when urged to jump in and take chances within Adam's home-grown framework. Which is why hearing this music in an intimate setting is so essential and exciting.

To get a finer sense of what was going on, let Adam explain:

JazzWax: Where were all of these musicians from? How do they know what to play?Adam Rudolph: The musicians have classical, jazz and World music backgrounds. They are part of a pool
of roughly 70 musicians that have come to my house for two to three hours to learn my intervallic concept, my hand signals, my conducting directions and my rhythm "cyclic Verticalism" concept. When they have absorbed all of this, they can come and participate in any performance of the orchestra they wish. At any given concert, I never know the orchestration mix or how many musicians will show up until performance time. For example, tonight we had 27 musicians, with two bass players. There could have been 50 players and five bass players.

JW: Are any scores completely written out?AR: There are through-composed solos, duos, trio and quartets that I add orchestration around in a spontaneous way. [Pictured: one of Adam's scores from the concert]

JW: How do the musicians know what you want them to play and in which keys?AR: There are 10 cues—each indicated by my fingers. I can cue any of the 10, and they can then improvise
freely within them using their imaginations and abilities to listen. In addition, I can use hand signals to give specific directions within each cue that includes held notes, staccatos, range and dynamics, and extended instrumental techniques. There are also 10 different ostinatos [continuously repeated phrases] and 4 orchestration themes.

JW: How do you work out these unusual scores?AR: I think about using rhythmic and intervallic elements and music themes, such as ragas and
transpositions that can be conducted in a spontaneous
way that will work together when combined. While conducting, in the moment, I use them to create a range of color and textures and motion in what I call the "audio syncretic musical fabric." The goal is to inspire the musicians to express their inner spirit through the voice of the instrument and create a magic atmosphere.

JW: How do you decide which musical textures you're going to use during a performance?AR: I listen and use my imagination. As in life itself, I do not know what will happen next. When I step up to
begin the concert, I do not know what direction the music will take until I start. Then it just flows. I am conducting in an improvisational way that is closely related to how I might improvise as an instrumentalist. I'm thinking of color, motion, dynamics, tension and release, and dialogue. As a result, these pieces never sound the same way twice.

If you’re in New York, Adam Rudolph's Go: Organic Orchestra will likely be performing in the early summer. I’ll keep you posted. You really need to see these guys in action. Totally gone.

The Go: Organic Orchestra's albums are available as downloads at iTunes and as CDs here at Meta Records. To see the orchestra live with Yusef Lateef, there's video clip here. To learn more about the Go: Organic Orchestra, go here.

Miles Davis. Speaking of totally gone, dig these two clips here
and here featuring Miles—the first for Honda Scooter and the second for something called Jazz City TV. "I'll play first and I'll tell you about it later." A good rule to live by.

April 04, 2008

Bud Shank didn't invent the bossa nova. Nor did he record the
first bossa nova jazz album. But according to Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bud's two Laurindo Almeida Quartet albums of 1953 and 1954 and his West Coast Jazz albums were a huge influence on the Brazilian music scene of the late 1950s. Searching for a way to cool off the Brazilian samba, musicians in Rio adapted the laid back California sound and borrowed some of the music theory invented by by West Coast Jazz artists,
resulting in the bossa nova. In effect, if samba was Brazil's bop, bossa nova was the country's "cool" jazz movement. [photo of Bud, above, by Hans S. Sirks]

In the final entry of our three-part conversation on the jazz forces that converged to shape the bossa nova, Bud talks about his unplanned trip to Rio in 1965, his visit to Jobim's apartment and his current project with pianist Joao Donato:

JazzWax: When did you first travel to Brazil?
Bud Shank: In 1965 I was invited down to Buenos
Aires, Argentina, to play
some concerts. It was January or the beginning of February. I didn’t
know anything about Brazil's Carnival at the time. I had heard about
it from musicians while I was staying in Argentina. So when my flight
home to Los Angeles stopped over in Rio, I decided to get off and reroute my
ticket.

JW: How long were you there? BS: I stayed in Rio for 10 days—the whole week of
Carnival. After
I had made those records with Clare Fischer in 1962 [Bossa Nova Samba and Brasamba], this visit was my first
opportunity to find the musical secret of the music, which by that
time, of course, had become huge worldwide. In Rio I met Jobim, Luiz Bonfa, Sergio Mendes and
a trombonist named Edson Maciel.

JW: Where did you meet Jobim?
BS: I went to his apartment when I was in Rio in 1965. It
was during
Carnival, and Jobim and other musicians were hanging out at his
apartment. Luiz Bonfa [pictured] was there, too.

JW: How did you find your way to Jobim’s apartment?
BS: Edson Maciel, the trombone player I was hanging out with, took me
there. Edson was a jazz musician and also very nuts, which was fine. He
was my guide during Carnival.

JW: What did the group in Jobim’s apartment sound like?
BS: It was beautiful. They mostly played. They sang a
little too. They had two guitars, and one guy with
a key chain in his hand going ca-ching-ca ching and another guy
scraping a paper matchbook on his pants going sh-shh-sh-shh. I had my
horn but I didn’t want to disturb what I was hearing and they didn’t
ask me to, so that was fine [laughing]. Hey, why play when you can listen? Just
two guitars, a matchbook on pants and a keychain makes the wildest
sound you ever heard in your life.

JW: It sounds like you were taken aback by the beauty.BS: I was thrilled by what I was
hearing. I had just come up from the streets where the true samba was
still going on, with the whistle and the big drum and the trombone. The
trombone is a big part of the samba. I don’t know how that ever
happened but it did.

JW: What did you and Jobim talk about?
BS: A lot of things. Jobim told me that he and the other musicians had listened to my records with Laurindo
Almeida in the early 1950s along with other West Coast albums I was on. He said those records helped them figure out what
direction to go in. He said the records gave them something to work on. At the time they didn’t know they were heading toward bossa nova. The
word hadn’t been invented yet. In fact, nobody even knows what it
means today. It’s just a term someone made up and they don’t even know
who it was. So they listened to our albums and then they added their
playing, rhythm and new songs they were writing.

JW: How did that make you feel?BS: It felt great to hear
that they were listening to my music. It was very flattering. I did
meet a terrific piano player down there, too, named Tenorio.

JW: You also met Sergio Mendes.BS: I found Sergio [pictured] myself. He was
working right behind
the hotel I was staying in. I didn’t know any of
these guys. I just walked in and said hi, and they knew who I was. I was amazed. About six months after I returned to the U.S., Sergio came up
with his group, we worked together at Shelly’s Manne-Hole and then
recorded Brazil ’65.

JW: Do you think Stan Getz heard your Brazilian albums from the 50s?
BS: I doubt it. I’m sure he didn’t. Stan was Stan. He didn’t listen to
much of anyone else [laughing]. What he did was perfect, with Charlie
Byrd [pictured]. Charlie was the one
who brought the music and songs back when he
was down there on a State Department tour, and Stan adapted it.

JW: Do you like bossa nova?
BS: What I like are various situations in which jazz music can be
played. I was into much more than Brazilian music during this period. I
got into Filipino music, Indian music and classical music as well as
Brazilian. Today I suppose my 1960s work would be known as World Music. The
record company
I was with at the time—Pacific Jazz—and its owner, Dick Bock, knew I had this curiosity and passion for experimentation. So
Dick
started creating situations for me, like putting me together with new
international artists. I recorded Koto and Flute with Kimeo Eto [pictured] in 1960.
A koto is a Japanese string instrument. Eto was blind and could not
speak one word of English. He wanted to record this unusual but serious
material, which is why
they needed a jazz musician who could play
classical. The legit guys were too straight up and down, and Eto wanted
flexibility. The music he handed me was double-sided. On one side were
Japanese characters. On the other was music written in the European
style, which helped a great deal.

JW: You played on the first Frank Sinatra-Jobim album, recorded in January 1967, with Claus Ogerman arrangements.BS: That's right. If I recall, we used four flutes and strings. Sinatra was fine on that session. He yielded to Jobim when necessary.

JW: Was Sinatra tough?BS: Nah. When Sinatra recorded, he knew
exactly what he wanted—but that didn’t stop him from telling the guys in the band. But he always did it in a nice way. I remember on my first or second tour with him in Japan, I was supposed to play an improvised solo on clarinet. But I decided to play it on the tenor sax instead. The first time
I did that, he turned around after the song with his “What the hell was that?” look. But he liked what he heard and wanted it in each time. I believe on that Jobim date, Sinatra was right in the studio with us, not in a booth. He liked to be right in with the band.

JW: Do you still travel to Brazil?
BS: Oh, yes. I love it down in Rio. I was there last
October and
recorded a DVD with pianist Joao Donato [pictured, in the 1960s]. He and I first recorded several times together. He may come up to L.A. at end of May. The guys who
are
filming a documentary on me shot footage of us down there, and now
they want Donato to come up to L.A. and for us to play in club so they
can get more on tape.

JazzWax tracks: Bud Shank recorded Brazilian themed albums throughout the 1960s. his albums with Joao Donato include Bud Shank and His Brazilian Friends (1965), The
Astrud Gilberto Album (1965), Brazil! Brazil! Brazil! (1966) and A
Bad Donato (1970). Bud also recorded Plays Cool, Quiet Bossa Nova (1966) with Laurindo Almeida as well as Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967). In 1981, he recorded with Charlie Byrd on Brazilville.

More recently Bud recorded Uma Tarde com Bud Shank e Joao
Donato. In addition, a DVD documentary of
Bud's life, Against the Tide, is available. Both can be found at Bud Shank's website here.

JazzWax thanks: James A Harrod was kind enough to provide images of several album covers used above from his personal archive, as well as the black-and-white images by Woody Woodward of Donato (above) and Clare Fischer and Bud (below).

JazzWax appraisal: Bud's 1962 albums with Clare Fischer [pictured below] are stunning works. When I heard them for the first time this week, I was taken aback. While Stan Getz's bossa nova album from 1962—Jazz Samba—is an indisputable classic, he plays the tenor saxophone high on the
horn's register and is teamed with acoustic guitar. Which is great. But Bud's alto saxophone seems to have a more natural, comfortable feel for the tissue-soft, rhythmic music, and he's teamed with Fischer's piano, giving the music a different sound. Bud soars
through each song while retaining the West Coast integrity of his phrasing and sensibility. His flute playing on these albums is equally delicate and seductive. His albums with Joao Donato are equally breezy and brilliant.

Bud Shank: Bossa Nova Years (Fresh Sound) is the double-CD
to buy, if you spot it. It is a sampling of nearly all Bud's bossa nova albums from the 1960s. When Bud and I talked about these recordings yesterday, he said he, too, had heard them only this week for the first time. "I have made so many
recordings, I can't keep track," he said, laughing. "When I hear myself play on these Brazilian sessions, I can hear myself intentionally holding back because the music was so soft." Bud holding back on blowing? Wow. You'd never know it listening to him here.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Fresh Sound CD is out of print and scarce. If you can't find it, look for re-issues of Bossa Nova Jazz Samba,Brasamba and any bossa album recorded by Bud.

But wait—I just dug through my bossa CD collection and discovered that Best of Sergio Mendes and Brasil '65 is actually the Brazil '65 album Bud mentions in his interview above. The Mendes album is available at iTunes. While Bud isn't playing on this album nearly as much as he should have been, dig his accompanying alto on So Nice,One Note Samba and Let Me, and his flute playing on Donato's Aquarius.

Even if you think you've heard it all, bossa-wise, I guarantee you're in for a big, big surprise with any of Bud's Brazilian-themed albums.

April 03, 2008

For years, the story of Bud Shank's contribution to the
development of Brazilian-jazz and bossa nova has remained largely untold. Bud's Brazilian-themed albums represent such a small fraction of his massive recording output that the focus of most past interviews have concentrated on his hundreds of albums as a leader and with Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson and other West Coast Jazz ensembles. Bud also isn't big on who-started-what controversies. But in the spirit of setting the record straight, Bud spoke with JazzWax about the role he and other West Coast musicians played in the development of Brazilian music in the 1950s. [photo of Bud above by William Claxton]

In Part 2 of my conversation with Bud on his Brazilian jazz recordings, he talks about his albums and those of other West Coast Jazz artists, and the influence those recordings had on Brazilian bossa nova emerging in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1950s:

JazzWax: Four years after your first Brazilian-themed recordings with Laurindo Almeida, Harry Babasin and Roy Harte, you recorded two more in 1958 and 1959. Can we call these the first bossa nova jazz albums?Bud Shank: In all fairness, you really can’t categorize what we did on those dates as “bossa nova.” The rhythm section was wrong. The basis wasn’t there yet.

JW: What was the difference between the 1953 recording and the 1958 and 1959 recordings?
BS: Nothing, really. We had nothing from Brazil to
listen
to. It was more of the
same, just a little more modern. We were bringing our own sound and marrying it to the
Brazilian rhythm. The 1958 and 1959 recordings were part of the
development that influenced Rio, which in turn influenced Charlie Byrd and
Stan Getz.

JW: So your records were heard in Rio, which inspired
the Brazilians to develop bossa nova. In turn, their late-1950s records influenced Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz and others up here in the early 1960s?BS: My records—but also the recordings of Gerry [Mulligan], Chet [Baker], [Paul] Desmond, [Dave] Brubeck and many West Coast Jazz artists. They also were part of that same
development. Nothing from New York was involved.

JW: That's fascinating. How exactly did you fit in?
BS: We were certainly a major part of the bossa nova’s
development. In the late
1940s and early 1950s, Antonio Carlos Jobim [pictured] and all his contemporaries
down in Brazil decided that they were the new punks, they were the new
exploratory kids. They said, “Why must we keep on playing the samba the
same way they do during Carnival?” They wanted to break out and play
something different.

JW: But they needed inspiration?BS: That's right. They started listening to foreign
records that
were available to them in Rio. Miraculously, many of the records they
got a hold of were from the West Coast of the U.S. It may have been the air routes. I don't know. The music they heard would later be
known as West Coast Jazz. At the time, in the very early 1950s, it was played by Brubeck and Desmond, Shorty Rogers, [Jimmy] Giuffre and others.

JW: What role did your recordings with Laurindo Almeida play?BS: Amidst all of the records that the Brazilians listened
to were the
10-inch albums Laurindo and I had made with Harry Babasin and Roy
Harte in late 1953 and early 1954. This is where their development started. It was through these
albums that they learned about the chord changes and patterns we used
in L.A.

JW: How were these songs different?BS: The Brazilians wrote new songs with folk melodies,
but unlike the old ones, they were using our
chord cadence called 2-7, 5-7, 1—something all West Coast musicians
were married to at the time.

JW: What does that cadence mean?BS: On a C-major scale consisting of
C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, the No. 2 is D
and No. 5 is G. The G is the dominant chord change that moves you from
one
key to another. It’s the way you get there, the road, so to speak. What happened
was that jazz musicians added the D-minor 7 chord (“2-7”) before the
G-7, giving you a nice chord sequence. The notes in a D-minor 7 are
very similar to the notes in a G-7 chord. It just gives you a much
better bass line and pattern. It’s still taught in schools today. It has to
be. Our whole West Coast school of improvisation is based on it.

JW: How did the Brazilians catch on?
BS: They had no one to study with or contact. They just
had the West
Coast jazz records and figured out what was going on musically. Then they started
using that chord sequence in their songs, modernizing their songs
and bringing them into the jazz world, which is essentially what they
wanted to do. Maybe they knew it or maybe they didn’t. But that’s what
they did.

JW: What you're saying is...BS: The music of West Coast jazz that appeared out of
L.A.—by the
way, I hate the term “West Coast jazz” but I’ve been stuck in it for 50
years and have to talk about it so I still use it—had a huge influence
on the Brazilians.

JW: But how do you know for sure that your albums with Laurindo and other West Coast jazz albums were directly influential?
BS: [Antonio Carlos] Jobim told me when I was in Rio in
1965. Recently, I appeared on a panel at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles as part of their
series exploring the arts and development. The theme was "Jazz in
the Early 1950s." People asked, “What happened to West Coast jazz in the
mid-1950s?” I said, “That’s simple—it went to Rio.” It was obvious to
me. When I brought it up at one of those meetings, people started to
think.

JW: Samba plus West Coast Jazz equals bossa nova?BS: Yes. Between what the Brazilians were doing, compositionally, and the
whole feel, it was West Coast jazz and “cool.”

JW: What was the next big change?
BS: In the late 1950s, jazz musicians started going down to Brazil on
State Department tours. They played
with Brazilian musicians and
brought Brazilian records back to the U.S. The jazz musicians and Brazilian records,
in turn, influenced other U.S. jazz musicians and record producers,
especially after the release and instant popularity of the movie Black Orpheus in
1959, which featured Luiz Bonfa's bossa nova music.

JW: So what is bossa nova?
BS: It’s a variation of the samba. But the rhythm pattern
is different.
It’s really a backward clave beat, which is used by Cuban musicians.
The bossa nova guys just turned that beat around. That early bossa
nova beat isn’t used anymore here or in Brazil. It was used to death in the early 1960s.
Everybody that played bossa played it—even guys with big bands would
use that figure, which was stupid. But the feeling of the music is
still there.

JW: You recorded two pure bossa nova albums in 1962.
BS: Yes, Laurindo and I recorded Bossa Nova: Shorty
Rogers and His
Giants in June
1962. Then later that year I made a couple of albums with
pianist Clare Fischer—Bossa Nova Jazz Samba and Brasamba. Laurindo and I
also recorded Bossa Nova at Home and Away with Vic Lewis In January
1963.

JW: What was Clare Fischer's role?BS:
Clare was very adept at speaking Portuguese and
Spanish.
He spoke Portuguese very well. As a result,
he knew a lot about the
samba. When the bossa nova came to him through Charlie Byrd and Stan
Getz’s recording, Jazz Samba, Fischer was ready for it. What he did was
exchange the guitar for a piano, which gave the music more of a jazz
sound rather than a folk feel, making the bossa nova more appealing to
jazz musicians compared with the constant guitar sound.

Tomorrow, in the third and final part of our conversation, Bud talks about his unplanned trip to Rio in 1965, his visit to Jobim's apartment, and his current project with Brazilian pianist Joao Donato.

JazzWax tracks: One of the best compilations of Bud's middle
bossa nova period (early 1960s) is on an out-of-print double-CD package from Fresh Sound called Bud Shank: Bossa Nova Years. The CD is very difficult to find, both in the U.S. and abroad. You may find it on eBay.

JazzWax thanks: Photos of the original 10-inch Laurindo Almeida Quartet album covers above featuring Bud Shank, Harry Babasin and Roy Harte were provided through the warm generosity of James A. Harrod, who owns one of the largest collections of West Coast Jazz albums and is working on a history of Pacific Jazz Records. Jim also provided album-cover photos of
Laurindo and Bud in the studio at the top of this post (that's engineer Phil Turetsky in the background) as well as the ones here of Harry (left) and Laurindo. Big thanks, Jim!

April 02, 2008

A few weeks ago I wrote about a sub-genre in the Blue Note catalog I called Afro-Bossa Hard Bop. The name refers to bossa nova originals written by jazz artists and recorded in hard bop style between 1963 and 1965. But in providing background on the bossa nova movement, I failed to include several key events and artists in the music's evolution. And readers on the West Coast were quick to let me know about it. "How could you have overlooked Bud Shank and his Brazilliance records of 1953 and the late 1950s," several readers demanded in emails. [photo above of Bud Shank by Elizabeth Becker]

Huh? Bud Shank, the legendary alto saxophonist of West Coast
big band and jazz-ensemble fame? So I did a little discographical research on Bud and quickly realized I had goofed. I returned emails saying I would try to reach Bud and rectify the oversight. "Good luck," readers told me. "Bud rarely talks about that period." So with hat in hand, I emailed Bud's wife, Linda, and humbly explained my error and desire to set the record straight.

Linda spoke to Bud, and a week ago I spent an hour talking with the West Coast saxophone giant about the bossa nova movement and how, in the 1950s, he came to record the first Brazilian-influenced jazz albums:

JazzWax: This story starts with Laurindo Almeida, doesn't it?Bud Shank: Yes. Laurindo was a Brazilian classical guitarist who came to Los Angeles from Rio de Janeiro in 1947 looking for work. Stan Kenton was one of the
first people he contacted when he got here, and Stan hired him right away. In Kenton’s band, like many at the time, we were recording more and more arrangements with Afro-Cuban rhythms, which were very hot during that period. Laurindo’s timing was perfect. Even though he was from Brazil, Laurindo had the right feel for Afro-Cuban music and for the neo-classical approach Stan was developing. Before hiring Laurindo, Stan used Bob Ahern on guitar, who was great for straight-up jazz but not as strong as Laurindo on the Latin stuff. In 1950, Stan started his Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra, which Laurindo was a big part of. Laurindo and I both played with Stan through the early spring of 1952.

JW: What was Laurindo’s role in the development of bossa nova?BS: Laurindo wrote quite a bit of music in the Brazilian style. It wasn’t bossa nova, because bossa nova hadn’t been invented or developed in the early 1950s. They were more like Brazilian folk songs or choros. Laurindo
wasn't a jazz musician and he wasn't an improviser. He was a classical guitarist who happened to be born in Rio. When you’re born in Rio you’re born with the samba. There’s nothing you can do about it. Laurindo could not avoid where he grew up—or what he heard when he grew up. Those songs were with him always. He wanted to be a soloist, and when he was working clubs in L.A., he played those folk songs because he knew that was more appealing in a bar than sitting there playing [Andres] Segovia’s classical pieces.

JW: How did you and Laurindo come to record the first jazz-Brazilian album in the U.S.?BS: In 1953, Laurindo was working on the Sunset Strip
in Hollywood with jazz bassist Harry Babasin [pictured] as a duo. Harry was amazed by Laurindo’s Brazilian songs, and after a few weeks Harry came up with an idea. He wondered what would happen if he and Laurindo added a drummer and jazz horn. Harry didn’t have anything specific in mind. He just wondered what would happen if two more instruments were added. [photo courtesy of Von Babasin]

JW: What happened next?BS: Harry talked it over with Laurindo and Roy Harte, a friend and drummer [pictured]. Harry had a record company at that time
called Nocturne, and his office was in Roy’s drum shop. Roy, meanwhile, was co-founder of Pacific Jazz Records. Harry and Roy decided I would be ideal to take a shot at what they had in mind. I had known both of them and Laurindo for a while.

JW: What happened next?BS: We did a rehearsal at Roy’s drum shop—a get-together—in late 1953 or early 1954. Laurindo brought in a few of those folk melodies. Luckily he had transposed some of the lead sheets into alto saxophone parts, which helped our exploration immensely. Otherwise we’d probably still be there [laughing].

JW: Did you know it sounded great right away?BS: We started running these things down with nothing in mind, nothing whatsoever. All of a sudden, we started
to say, “Yeah, there's something there.” The surprising
thing was that Roy didn’t know what to do rhythmically with the drums. In all fairness, there had been nothing established yet to base it off of. So Roy showed up with a conga drum, which, of course, is from Cuba. It looked right, but in retrospect was all wrong. There was nothing for him to do any research about it, you know. Even during Carnival in Brazil with the street samba, they don’t use conga drums. They use big booming drums. But we didn't know this at the time.

JW: What happened after the rehearsal?BS: We were feeling our way through the music. Some of the choros Laurindo had brought in weren't really conducive to improvisation because of their chord structure. So we would make up something—I think in one case we just used blues chord changes. On others we made up something that was close to the melody for improvisational purposes.

JW: How did you take what the group developed to the next level?BS: Well, things got interesting fast. Through the efforts of Dick Bock, the founder of Pacific Jazz Records, we
got a gig on Monday nights at a club called The Haig. That’s where Gerry [Mulligan] and Chet [Baker] had been working. We were the off-night band. They had taken the piano and burned it or something—[laughing] there was no piano at The Haig at that time—and we didn’t use one. [photo of the quartet at The Haig courtesy of Von Babasin]

[According to an oral history with Gerry Mulligan, The Haig’s 9-foot concert grand piano was removed in 1952 prior to the arrival of vibraphonist Red Norvo and his trio. Mulligan, who was playing the off-night, turned down the offer for an upright.]

JW: How did The Haig gig lead to a record date?BS: After we worked at the Haig for about six weeks, we went into a rehearsal studio with portable sound
equipment and made our first recording of these things. We had put enough stuff together—a couple of originals were written, one by Dick Hazard, a couple more by Laurindo. I don’t think I had written anything yet—eventually I did. The results appeared on two 10-inch LPs called The Laurindo Almeida Quartet, Vol.1 and Vol. 2. [Based on a March 1954 Down Beat review of the album, tracks for the first LP were likely recorded in late 1953 or early 1954, with the second LP recorded shortly afterward. The two sessions were later re-issued as Brazilliance on a 12-inch LP.]

JW: So Brazilian jazz started in the same place as the Mulligan piano-less quartet?BS: Yes. Our 10-inch records of 1954 probably mark the beginning of Brazilian jazz. Over the next four years, I recorded dozens of straight-up jazz albums
as a leader and with small groups and big bands on the West Coast. When the 12-inch LP began to be issued in greater frequency in the late 1950s, Laurindo, me, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Chuck Flores went into the World Pacific
Records studios [in March 1958] and recorded another 10 Brazilian-influenced jazz tracks. These were released as
Holiday in Brazil, which expanded the concept we began in 1954. Then [in early 1959], the same group recorded another 10 tracks for the album Latin Contrasts.

Tomorrow, in part 2, Bud talks about his conversations with Antonio Carlos Jobim and the influence his Almeida recordings and West Coast Jazz records had on Jobim and other Brazilian musicians who were developing a cooler version of the samba in the second half of the 1950s.

JazzWax tracks: The Brazilian-influenced jazz albums Bud
Shank and Laurindo Almeida recorded in late 1953 or early 1954, and in1958 and 1959, can be found on two CDs, Brazilliance Vol. 1 and Brazilliance Vol. 2. You
can find them here and here, respectively. Only Volume 1 is available as a download at Amazon and iTunes.

April 01, 2008

Yesterday's post featured my "Top 10 Mindblowers" of the first quarter—noteworthy quotes that surfaced in my JazzWax interviews with jazz legends over the past three months. Today's post features my "Top 10 Replays"—CDs I acquired between January and March that refuse to be put away and sit stubbornly in a stack next to my stereo because I play them so often.

May I have the envelope, please? (Tearing sound.) Here, then, are my Top 10 Replays—in no particular order. Do yourself a favor and grab some or all of them. These are exceptional albums by any measure:

Replay #1: Maynard Ferguson: Dancing Sessions. This CD from the European Jazz Beat label combines two drop-dead Maynard
Ferguson albums for Roulette Records—Plays for Jazz Dancing (1959) and Let's Face the Music and Dance (1960). Both college dance albums that feature rocket-fuel arrangements and big band playing with the throttle wide open. Mosaic issued a complete "Maynard on Roulette" box years ago. Now sadly out of print, the box fetches around $700 at eBay auctions. This single CD provides a superb taste of Maynard's unmatched output during this period. Except for an odd dropout in fidelity on Mangos, every track is better than the next. And you get to hear why so many listeners are willing to pay so much for the Mosaic box. As a bonus, you also get an unreleased vocal track of Let's Fall in Love by Ann Marie Moss (who soon after this session would marry singer Jackie Paris). For some reason, this fine vocal track was not released on the original LP. Go here.

Replay #2: Donald Byrd and Gigi Gryce: Complete Jazz Lab Studio Sessions #1. This LoneHill Jazz CD is really pieces of two different LPs—Jazz Lab and Modern Jazz
Perspective, both recorded in 1957. I like it because you get all of the group's best-known tunes on one disc. Tracks include Nica's Tempo, Sans Souci, I Remember Clifford, An Evening in Casablanca,Social Call and Stablemates. The late 1950s never sounded so good. Three sets of top-shelf musicians accompany trumpeter Byrd and alto saxophonist Gryce, and the two leaders are at their absolute best here. Simply remarkable. I don't think I'll ever put this CD away. Go here.

Replay #3. Gerry Mulligan: Night Lights. Few jazz albums are as delicate as this one. Recorded in September 1963, it's one of the
most gentle jazz albums and has been my day-starter ever since hearing it open David Brent Johnson's Night Lights radio show on WFIU back in January. The personnel is Mulligan (baritone sax), Art Farmer (trumpet and flugelhorn), Bob Brookmeyer (trombone), Jim Hall (guitar), Bill Crow (bass) and Dave Bailey (drums). This album is like listening to Nantucket mist at 3 am. I bought a Japanese import to capture every drop of sound, and the restoration is superb. Go here.

Replay #4. Frank Wess: Wess Point—The Commodore Recordings. I raved about this 1954 session in a blog post here when I was still listening relentlessly to the LP. When I spotted the Fresh Sound CD, I couldn't resist. I was getting tired of flipping the record
over and over. This CD features Wess leading a quintet and sextet.
Dig the lineup—Wess (tenor sax), Henry Coker (trombone), Jimmy Jones (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Osie Johnson (drums). You'll even get to hear Osie drop a drum stick on Mishawaka without missing a beat. Joe Wilder is the added sextet player. There's simply nothing like Wess in the early and mid-1950s, and his output for Savoy and other labels as a writer, arranger and blower continues to go unrecognized. I adore this album, and it's great to see that two Wess tracks from Thad Jones' own Commodore date have been added. Go here.

Replay #5. Teddy Charles: New Directions. Everything Teddy recorded in the 1950s is great by me. I became a freak for Teddy's cool, hip vibes sound after researching and interviewing him here. I've been particularly
fond lately of Teddy's 1951 and 1952 Prestige recordings released as part of a series called New Directions. You'll be hard-pressed to find another Lady Is a Tramp or Tenderly that sounds this gone. Not to mention one my favorite all-time Teddy tracks, Edging Out. All of the New Directions material has been combined on one CD and the tracks still sound exciting and fresh. So exciting, in fact, that you have to keep reminding yourself that when they recorded, Bird is still alive, Miles isn't quite sure what direction he's going in, and West Coast jazz is still an experiment. Teddy was way ahead of the curve. Go here.

Replay #6. Oscar Pettiford: Manhattan Jazz Septette. I did not know this 1956 album even existed until alto saxophonist Hal McKusick mentioned it during one of our phone conversations a
month or so ago. "Oh, sure, it's fantastic," Hal said. "You've got to get your hands on it." As always, Hal was right on the money. The personnel says it all—Urbie Green (trombone), Hal (alto sax), Herbie Mann (flute, tenor), Eddie Costa (piano, vibes), Barry Galbraith (guitar), Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Osie Johnson (drums), with sublime arrangements by Manny Albam. Believe it or not, this CD from LoneHill Jazz is teamed with Galbraith's Guitar with the Wind (1958), which is equally superb. Galbraith is a future JazzWax post, for sure. Go here.

Replay #7:Herbie Mann-Sam Most Quintet. If you dig jazz flute, this album kills. While researching Herbie Mann before blogging
about Just Wailin', I came across this 1955 album in Mann's discography. The entry virtually whispered to me, "How can this possibly be bad given the year, the tracks and the Bethlehem label?" So I closed my eyes and ordered a Japanese remastered version. I've been blown away ever since it arrived. Mann and Most are on flutes, Joe Puma on guitar, Jimmy Gannon on bass and Lee Kleinman on drums. Mann and Most tear around like a pair of otters and get solid swinging support from the sidemen. This album is incredible. Go here.

Replay #8: Oscar Peterson: Historic Carnegie Hall Concerts. Most readers of this blog probably already own these Peterson
recordings. If not, this CD from Giant Steps features Peterson's astonishing live debut in 1949 and includes his 1950, 1952 and 1953 concerts. Peterson's rich, superhuman playing leaves the audience gasping on each song. Peterson did not use a drummer on any of these dates, and for good reason. His left hand was saving him a fortune. Go here.

Replay #9: George Williams: Rhythm Was His Business. This is another album I never would have known about had Hal McKusick not told me about it in enthusiastic terms in January. A prolific
and lightning-fast penman, Williams arranged for Glenn Miller and Boyd Raeburn in the early 1940s, Gene Krupa in the mid-1940s, and Ray Anthony in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This album from 1956 was a tribute to Jimmie Lunceford and included some heady big-band session players, including Hal, Jimmy Cleveland, Al Cohn, Bernie Glow, Ernie Royal, Charlie Shavers and Conte Candoli. Go here.

Replay #10: John Coltrane: Settin' the Pace. I've owned this CD for years, but the just-issued version that's part of the Rudy Van Gelder Remasters series (Concord) is spectacular. Coltrane
in 1958 was on the verge of his next phase but clearly still in love with ballads and mood-making. I also love this album because it combines songs like I See Your Face Before Me with Rise 'N' Shine, one of the all-time great Trane on Prestige recordings that foreshadows his let-loose Atlantic period. If you own the Fearless Leader box (I don't), then you already have this recording (though split over discs No. 3 and 4). If you don't own the box, this CD is a slick restored gem that sounds as clean as a Bentley door closing. Go here.

About

Marc Myers writes on music and the arts for The Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (Univ. of California Press). Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year" winner.